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Somewhat - otherwise you have to guard the southern edge of that front anyway, and they don't generally have a lot of troops there.

They don't really need the oil by that time though (post-Bitter Peace, they might).
 
Well, if Germany manage to lose it's not good for Italy :).

A bunch of amphibious attacks around the Black Sea can help distract a lot of Soviet troops from the Moscow push, even if you're not planning on trying to hold the area. Pushing for Stalingrad does require commiting most of your (probable) forces though.

Yeah, but Italy's resources might be better spent taking out the Allies while Germany farts around in the Ukraine. If Italy can tidy up the Allies before Barbarossa gets too involved, they might be in a better position to threaten the Soviets in the ways you mention, or by taking Vladivostok.

Cutting off the Soviets from their oil seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice the Soviets will have so much oil and fuel sitting in Moscow that taking the Caucuses is irrelevant except for VPs (assuming you have your own oil supply already).
 
Well thanks for all the advice, its great to get so much!

I started another game, had a few days off. Did much better, but still lost in the end. I feel that I got a good build. My Navy came quite late, but was extremely modern, and I had a good land force.

Unfortunately, while I harassed the soviets, and we pushed for Moscow, Netherlands got liberated and 1 billion expedition forces arrived. Even after shifting almost my entire army west, and with the Germans, we couldn't push them back into the sea.

My army in the West was 30 infantry divisions (3 inf + 1 art) and 10 of (3 L Arm + 2 MOT) and 10 of (4 MOT).

Maybe I should have ignored this and kept pushing for a Russian surrender?
Or maybe I Should have not trusted the Germans, and reacted quicker to the Netherlands invasion?

Either way it was fun, but now I have work, so must start a new game that will take ages to find out what happens.

I think I will try much the same, but keep a sizable army unused in the West, to react quickly to invasions, since Germany seems unable to do so.
 
Also, in regards to the Soviets, you want to give AI Germany as much help as you can. While I have seen it win against the Soviets, it generally only does so if its allies can help out. One very big way you could potentially help out is by starting Barbarossa for them early. If you wait until the historical start of Barbarossa you are basically giving the Ruskies an extra year on the best laws they can handle. Ideally, you want to DoW as soon as the forced no DoW part of the MR Pact is over, assuming you let the Germans fire that (taking Poland sort of mucks that up). If the Soviets are having a rough go at the Winter War then you may be able to basically catch them with their pants down. The Soviet army of 1940, especially if involved with Finland, is no match for the German army of that time, even if both are left to the AI.
 
Gibraltar is a nightmare!
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Wow, I've never had a problem invading it. Two divisions of MAR usually take it without too many losses. The hardest part is getting into position to launch the invasion before the game map was changed to allow invasions from the Med.
 
I find that I'm hardly in a position to assault it by sea if the RN is still intact. Yesterday it took three of my highly trained German MAR's a couple of weeks to take it, and that was after the Fall of Britain proper. As Italy, your IC are too precious to risk losing ships here. Just take Spain.
 
For those CTF fleets, wouldn't that many CAGs get a MASSIVE stacking penalty? It seems to be that 2 CVs would be best as then the planes are not murdered by their own stacking penalties and are able to do some damage.
 
You guys really need to think outside the box. You keep waiting till traditional times is why you have problems :)

I routinely take Gibralter/Malta/Suez in one fell swoop as Italy or Germany with nothing more then Infx3 units. But you need to do it Immediately. Whether you go west first or you go Poland first, whether you are Germany or Italy, have your units in place and ready to go and as soon as you know an Allied DOW is coming you hit those locations. Very simple. Ill do overkill to guarentee i get them (4-5 Inf div for Gibralter, 4 for Malta, a dozen or so for the Suez). The Suez your likely to take naval losses so the more you can send the better. Malta falls easy and Gibralter isnt much harder.

If Im germany one of the first thing i do is build transports and get some infantry and ship them to Italy as soon as they are in the Axis. If Im Italy I prefer to take Spain first but if the Civil War launches late ill go Balkans. As Italy i usually control Spain, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey and Persia by the time Germany attacks Poland. So when the Attack starts i hit the 3 locations above and attack from Persia into Iraq. If i feel like helping in Russia ill hang on to the border countries, if i dont, ill puppet them right before Barbarossa. Even if Russia overruns them so what? Ive drained them for a few years and now they are stretched all out and cant reinforce against the Germans so easy.

As Germany I often attack UK first. I hit the three spots above, Bombay then Calcutta and Rangoon (From Italian East Africa), and Singapore (from Taiwan), then if necc Hong Kong. I get the UK to fall in one month on average.

Why would anyone want to wait and build huge fleets and go against well fortified positions? its not worth it. Proactive over reactive.
 
There's a fine line between thinking out of the box and gaming the system. I already have a large margin of advantage over the AI even though I have only ever taken a cursory glance at modifiers, division compositions and all this advanced stuff. I know when the war will start and everything that follows from this fact. I cannot hide this knowledge completely (I'm amassing troops at the Polish border after all) but still.

Don't get me wrong, it can be very satisfying to carry out a neatly planned and organized operation and we can come up with a justification. Having troop transports with just Infantry onboard in a hostile sea province can still lead to disaster IME - the Brits have sunk my transports before when I attempted to capture Suez by sea, irregardless of CAG duty or fighter cover, especially since it will inevitably bog down for weeks (at least in SF ICE) without MAR. Perhaps the AI does not garrison these locations in other versions or mods.
 
I dont worry too too much about it because humans are always going to be better then the AI, and imo the AI gets away with alot of stuff itself. I simply do not buy games to replay exactly what happened in history, especially since ive been wargaming almost 40 years, after awhile it gets real stale. And its not like players are not going to do these maneuvers anyway, its just they wait too long and then complain about how difficult they are. On one hand we play a minor and take over the world but on the other handmaneuvers like this are gamey. The moment you DOW or are DOW'd against, and the UK and French are on the other side, there is tremendous risk involved in any naval maneuver. Taking Ireland and not having Britain DOW you as ive done in the past i consider gamey, these moves above, i can live with, and suggest to others to try.
 
I'm not advocating to replay history - I've been advocating the invasion of Spain by Italy, something I understand did not happen IRL, and the subsequent capture of Gibraltar by land. I'm also not complaingin, I'm pointing out some flaws with some scenarios, and not even necessarily the one you have suggested. Invading Gibraltar is a cake walk for me as well - as soon as I've conquered Great Britain. Or Spain. Neither of which makes use of knowledge only a human player will be privvy to.

AI's, generally speaking, are already better than humans in many regards, and software's replacing the latter even in non-repetetive highly complex tasks at a growing rate. It's just a question of time, money and effort. Not many would buy a Deep Blue HoI! :p
 
I seldom ever finish a game, i get too bored at somepoint. I want the game to be challenging, but i simply dont believe that hard mode should be nerfing me in order to make the game challenging, too me thats against what im playing for. I simply would love to see the game challenging in of itself. Its all gamey to me in one way or another. I just try and make it at least interesting.
 
That's your prerogative, 21oliver, as is the way you go about it. We will have to disagree about whether taking even more advantage of an AI completely blind and completely physically unable to defend itself makes the game more interesting. For most people including me, playing by some houserules to achieve a certain level of verisimillitude is the more plausible, more interesting approach.
 
I agree with Lord Solar. And actually if the AI was smarter, invading Spain would be a very dubious decision as it opens up a huge front for the US and UK to invade.

Another factor is that unlike HOI 2 partisan activity is pathetically irrelevant and doesn´t bogs your supplies (while HOI 2 had the transport capacity that meant having large hostile areas was nightmare and would cripple operations everywhere). Here you put colaboration government everywhere and all is fine and dandy. As a secondary sugestion for balance I would recomend Paradox to simply remove Colaboration governments for fascist governments as it´s gamey and makes ZERO sense.
 
All those spots are defended. And they have superior fleets guarding them. I understand what your saying but essentially most of the game is that way. For example, most players consider it gamey to invade nations not mobilized. Well guess what? thats most of the nations you invade, especially as the Axis. To be honest i dont really find it interesting either way. One way i can usually always outsmart the AI unless it "cheats" for lack of a better term. The other if i sit back and let the AI get the advantage well thats not really interesting either. Anyway my points were simply because players were having problems initiating things like Gibralter amphibs, i was simply pointing out why.
 
I have no problem with making Italy more prepared for the outbreak of hostilities then they were in history. They entered the war at the time of their choosing. They should have had a Pearl Harbor or two planned. The fact that they didn't demonstrates the weakness of their national leadership. We do not have to replicate that. However, in my opinion, and in the way that I like to play the game, there is some role playing. I like to imagine how history really would play out if these things happened and how all the international players would have reacted. As Italy I have conquered every non aligned and non guaranteed country on the globe. It was merely to demonstrate the flaws in the game, not to have fun. There was no fun in watching the UK sit by while Italians invaded Ireland and all of Scandinavia. It is just stupid to watch the British allow Italian CTF's and invasion fleets to steam through Gibraltar and Suez on their way to invade South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The game will let you do it, but it's not plausible as alternative history. Even attacking Yugoslavia would have been fraught with dangers. There was a chance that France may have intervened and the Balkan league may have been revived to prevent outsiders dominating their neighbors one by one. Stalin was no friend of the regimes in Bulgaria and Romania, but I doubt he would have allowed Mussolini to annex them. So, just because the game allows you to get away with something doesn't necessarily mean you should do it. The game gets more interesting when you add a bit of role playing to it. IMHO. YMMV.
 
Well, invading Spain is still kind of dubious in that you gotta post troops there to hold back invasions (which the UK will do). You can get spread awfully thin since Spain has so many ports. Garrisoning France as Germany is bad enough (unless you just puppet France rather than take Fall of France).

As for defeating the RN as Italy, that's part of the challenge. Budgeting IC so that you have enough ground forces to help in the war AND have a naval presence that can keep the RN out of your way are part of what makes Italy interesting.

The last time I tried it, I had enough navy to smash the RN, but insufficient troop strength to help Germany repulse a 1941 Overlord (the USA entered the war before I did). That game, though, I overbuilt CVs and CAGs. Other times, I've got enough NAVs and SAGs to sink anything the RN throws at me (and, to be honest, it's probably more cost effective to NAV the RN to death in the Med than build a navy strong enough to sink it all).